The most useful coin for a child in the 1960s. Sure, half a crown – 2s 6d – was what everyone hoped for and often got from uncles and friends of parents for Christmas or birthdays. But that was special money for special use.

A sixpence was daily currency, handed out by middle-class parents as a method of getting their child to go out, used as an incentive or reward by working-class parents to their offspring. Sixpence was twelve ha’penny chews. Sixpence was both the Beano and the Dandy together. Sixpence was six goes on the pinball machine at the back of the local cafe that thought of itself as a “milkbar”. Sixpence was a medium Cadbury’s Dairy Milk or a large Fry’s Turkish Delight. Sixpence was a half return to somewhere nearby – often just the next station or so – on the train. Sixpence was a child’s seat in the stalls for a matinee at the local ABC.

Kif Bowden-Smith loved growing up in the 1960s. During that decade he founded the Transdiffusion Broadcasting System, still extant today, and built the archive you're looking at now. He worked for Brian Epstein's NEMS in the classical department but never met The Beatles.